Mildly interesting (from a branding/style perspective) how Apple, and only Apple, chose not to feature their logo at the top, but to add it to the bottom where only people who read (or at least scrolled) the whole thing could see it.
Reform Government Surveillance
141–150 of 223 posts
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#142This is getting ridiculous. The ad empires built on stalking every single breath of every single human want to take governments to task on the topic of stalking. What about cleaning up your own house first? 1. Limiting Corporations’ Authority to Collect Users’ Information Corporations should codify sensible limitations on their ability to collect and disclose user data that balance their need for the data in limited…
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Not really. I saw that as well and checked for other in-page stalking. There is no other tracking on the page than Google Analytics, which is the minimum you can get away with in this day and age!
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
They quote Zuckerberg on that site: "Reports about government surveillance have shown there is a real need for greater disclosure and new limits on how governments collect information." So what about limits on how businesses collect information?
There is a huge difference between companies collecting data on their customers and a govt collecting on their entire population...
There is a smaller difference when it's a business collecting data on the entire population.
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#144In order to reform government surveillance, we also need to reform commercial surveillance.
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#145Among other things, this is the tipping point for how Snowden will be viewed. If all these powerful companies agree, in an unprecedented show of unanimity, that this is an important problem, then Snowden is ipso facto a hero for bringing it to our attention. The curious thing is, I feel the linkage works in the other direction too. If Snowden had been caught and was now having his brains scrambled by solitary confine…
There is nothing more reviled by people who were born during the cold war than a criminal who defects first to china and then to russia. No amount of tech industry pr can facilitate a comeback from that. Almost half of the people in this country will always see Snowden as a traitor. Government surveillance has become a political wedge issue, similar to abortion. No one likes it or encourages it but people have strong…
There is nothing more reviled by people who were born during the cold war than a criminal who defects first to china and then to russia.
I am a Russian American and I see this the other way around. The fact that Snowden had to escape to Russia (of all places!) to maintain his freedom is an indictment of the sorry state of affairs in the U.S. Traditionally the U.S. has been a beacon of hope for political prisoners and has a proud history of shielding dissidents. Just think of it -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Yelena Bonner, Joseph Brodsky, I mean, the list is endless!
To me (and a lot of other people whose cultural identity is tied to that era) the idea that we're now moving into a world where things are flipped upside down is incredibly weird. I really can't think of other events that cause greater cognitive dissonance. Just think of it -- political dissidents seek asylum in Russia now?! Does that not seem odd?
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#146They need to NRA that thing up!
Get people to sign up and pledge their support, organize local chapters, organize, organize, organize.
Am I the only one missing here the call to action?
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not once does the name "Edward Snowden" appear anywhere on the web-page or open letter! These companies are simply grand-standing to further their own ambition. They don't care what happens to Snowden, they deny even his very existence.
They may not all care what happens to Snowden, but I think it's unfair to say they're merely showing off. I think these companies are acting on pretty high principle. They have little to gain by issuing such a statement, except the goodwill of people like us, but since they're all participating, such goodwill is evenly distributed and no one of them derives an advantage from it. Whereas they all depend on good relati…
People won’t use technology they don’t trust. Governments have put this trust at risk, and governments need to help restore it.”
—Brad Smith, General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft
That makes it pretty clear to me why this campaign is being orchestrated by the companies involved.
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think these companies are acting on pretty high principle. NOt that i disagree, but I do think if other companies (eg, apple, intel) signed off on this it would remove the stigma of self-dealing. If the "tech industry" was more broadly represented (and included say, Stanford & MIT) again this would be a much more powerful statement. But the reality, is that SV lives off of the governmnet in many indirect ways (nasa…
> …if other companies (eg, apple, intel) signed off on… Apple's logo appear at the bottom of "An open letter to Washington".
I wonder why doesn't it show up on the top of the page
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#149Regardless of your opinion on the leaks, this marks something really interesting in the course of history. Communications is one of the few services that governments co-opt indirectly. Lockheed Martin knows it's building war jets. But here, the signatories didn't set out to build government surveillance engines, it was required of them after it became clear how useful they could be. Their response could set the tone…
It's pretty clear why companies like Verizon and AT&T will never stand up and put their names on a list like this. Verizon and AT&T are a government regulated duopoly, and they love the protection racket that keeps competition out. They're one step away from being state enterprises. Those closest to being utilities are the last entities that will want to push back against the government (eg Level3). They're the most…
> Verizon and AT&T are a government regulated duopoly, and they love the protection racket that keeps competition out.
Verizon and AT&T are government regulated, and they are a duopoly, but its not regulation that keeps competition out. The natural state of communications networks are to converge on a state of monopoly. There is infinite economics of scale in telecom, and a "winner takes all" return on capital investment. Government regulation is the only thing keeping the industry from consolidating to one carrier even faster than it's already doing.
Re: Reform Government Surveillance
#150Among other things, this is the tipping point for how Snowden will be viewed. If all these powerful companies agree, in an unprecedented show of unanimity, that this is an important problem, then Snowden is ipso facto a hero for bringing it to our attention. The curious thing is, I feel the linkage works in the other direction too. If Snowden had been caught and was now having his brains scrambled by solitary confine…
There is nothing more reviled by people who were born during the cold war than a criminal who defects first to china and then to russia. No amount of tech industry pr can facilitate a comeback from that. Almost half of the people in this country will always see Snowden as a traitor. Government surveillance has become a political wedge issue, similar to abortion. No one likes it or encourages it but people have strong…
> No amount of tech industry pr can facilitate a comeback from that. Almost half of the people in this country will always see Snowden as a traitor.
Your post is absolutely right, and the people responding to you really fail to capture the dynamic existing in American society. The nature of the American public is that it is willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt, but will view with intense skepticism those associated with Russia or China. That's the legacy of the Cold War.
This is, incidentally, why you see so much support for surveillance in the first place. People aren't intentionally trying to bring about some sort of futuristic dystopia. But the surveillance apparatus has been in place for most of the post century, and has saw America through the Cold War. Politicians of a certain age and temperament see the latest programs as simply adapting the apparatus to changing technology, not fundamentally increasing its scope or invasiveness.